Ep. #2 Tanisha Jowsey talks “Medical Tribes”

“Part of my role in teaching medical students is to peel back the inculturation that they’re in, to be able to relate with patients. Remember before you were a med student, what it actually meant to be the person sitting with your dying grandmother…That’s something that, as an anthropologist, that’s part of my role is to be able to see where those boundaries are, what it means to be a doctor, and what it means to not be a doctor.”

Dr. Tanisha Jowsey, an applied medical anthropologist at the University of Auckland (unidirectory.auckland.ac.nz/people/t-jowsey), spoke to our own Julia Brown about how to analyze a medical emergency, how machines and people communicate in the Operating Theatre, and how to manage her position as a pregnant anthropologist when there’s blood on the floor.